Overall, customer/patient satisfaction with existing hearing assistive devices is very low. Innovations at the microphone level related to marriage of high performance miniature microphone hardware with advanced signal processing have the potential to introduce new operating modalities for hearing-aids, and greatly improve hearing-aid performance and client satisfaction. This demands a revolutionary approach to the design of miniature microphones with extremely high performance and low-noise. This commercial innovation is focused on realizing such a device with the use of silicon micromachining and innovative photonics-based detection principles - resulting in microphones operating in a fundamentally different way than existing MEMS microphones. PUBLIC HEALTH RELEVANCE This innovation is in support of the NIDCD mission to support efforts to create and refine devices that may replace or substitute for lost and impaired sensory and communication functions. Despite the growing importance of hearing assistive devices to the public and user dissatisfaction with such devices, relatively few commercial innovations have resulted to address this challenge. This innovation seeks to make a substantial contribution in this area. [unreadable] [unreadable] [unreadable]